Sending a Nutter message

This past week Michael Nutter was elected to succeed John Street as the next mayor of Philadelphia. Despite an extremely low turnout of only 28.7% of registered voters, Democratic candidate Nutter won, defeating Republican candidate Al Taubenberger 222,583 (83.4%) to 46,029 (17.3%) with 96.85% of the precincts reporting. I do not claim to be any sort of political expert, but I think anyone who expected or even hoped for a narrower margin of victory was without a doubt very much kidding themselves.

According to this Wikipedia list of Philadelphia mayors the last Republican mayor left office in January, 1952. (I had to look it up just to satisfy my own curiosity because I know that in my lifetime Philly has been a staunchly Democratic town.) So there have been nothing but Democratic mayors for 56 years. Nutter will now be the ninth consecutive Democratic mayor, adding at least another four years to the streak (barring scandal or tragedy). The outgoing mayor, John Street, has served two consecutive terms and was prohibited by city law from running again this time.

The reason why I bring all this up is simply to provide a context for something which struck me as somewhat odd in Nutter's last TV ad. He was stating that among the reasons people should vote is "We've got to show these two that they are still accountable for what they've done" (as images of Bush and Cheney appear on the screen).

So my question is this... How in the heck was a vote for Nutter (I assume) over little-known Republican candidate Al Taubenberger, for whom I didn't even notice any TV commercials—for whatever THAT'S worth—until just a few days before the actual election, sending a message of any kind to Bush/Cheney or the Republican party in general?

I sincerely doubt that Bush/Cheney or the Republican powers-that-be looked at the Philadelphia mayoral election with any serious hope thinking that, "We as Republicans need to win Philadelphia this year." Nor do I think any Republicans with national party-level clout suddenly thought, "Oh no, we lost in Philadelphia—we'd better get back to being more accountable to the American people!"

And I wonder how many Philadelphians would have normally voted for Taubenberger, but instead said to themselves, "I don't like what Bush/Cheney have done and I don't like the war in Iraq. Hmmm, I'd better vote for a Democratic mayor of Philadelphia—that'll show'em!"
____________________________

[Just to be perfectly clear, I live in New Jersey so I have no personal stake of any kind in the Philadelphia mayoral election. Also, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat as I prefer to remain an Independent voter. I vote for whomever I feel is the best candidate for a position—if there's ever a way to somehow figure that out.]